Your opinions: How many gold is one production hammer worth?

If you have roughly equal :hammers: and :commerce: terrain, what's the exchange rate?

  • Early on, 1 hammer : equals 5 or more gold

    Votes: 16 15.7%
  • Early on, 1 hammer equals 3 gold

    Votes: 49 48.0%
  • Early on, hammers and gold are equally valuable

    Votes: 25 24.5%
  • In the midgame, 1 hammer equals 5 or more gold

    Votes: 5 4.9%
  • In the midgame, 1 hammer equals 3 gold

    Votes: 50 49.0%
  • In the midgame, hammers and gold are equally valuable

    Votes: 16 15.7%
  • Later on, 1 hammer equals 5 or more gold

    Votes: 19 18.6%
  • Later on, 1 hammer equals 3 gold

    Votes: 22 21.6%
  • Later on, hammers and gold are equally valuable

    Votes: 28 27.5%
  • War raises the worth of :hammers: a lot

    Votes: 58 56.9%
  • Universal Suffrage raises the worth of :gold: a lot

    Votes: 34 33.3%
  • In a CE, :hammers: are worth even more

    Votes: 24 23.5%
  • In an SE/FE, extra :gold: is worth more than extra :hammers:

    Votes: 11 10.8%
  • None of the above reflect my opinions

    Votes: 13 12.7%

  • Total voters
    102

frob2900

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Joined
Oct 21, 2006
Messages
2,117
I'm making some mathematical calculations on the worth of various things, such as missionary spamming for optimal profit, but in doing so I found that such considerations often require some kind of "exchange ratio" for :hammers: to :gold:.

So, in your opinion, what's a fair ratio? Would you rather have a bunch of :gold: or one :hammers:? How does the terrain in your empire factor in? Does the ratio scale over the duration of the game?

The above poll options assume your empire has roughly equal terrain when it comes to :hammers: and :commerce: production (since tiles can't produce gold directly, the terrain comparison is made in terms of commerce, which you can turn into gold when necessary). The poll is a multiple-choice poll, so you can vote for all options you consider true (Obviously some options are contradictory, and shouldn't be chosen together ;)).

The listed eras denote:
  • Early game is approximately up until the late classical (Obviously, hammers are very, very valuable here).
  • Mid-game is from the late classical/early medieval up until the end of the renaissance (when e.g. the Free Speech/Universal Suffrage civics become available)
  • Late-game is the era when all civics are available and you are industrializing.

Initially I thought a 3 gold to 1 hammer ratio was fair (since I often prefer hammers), but if you think it is higher or lower than this, choose the appropriate option(s) and comment here. I also assumed that hammers are always more valuable than gold in the 1 to 1 sense, except in special circumstances (e.g. when running a very mine heavy empire with poor income). Hopefully at least one of the poll options reflects a fair statement.

If you think the ratios in the poll options are poorly chosen, feel free to post a reply with your preferred ratios! E.g. 1:hammers: to 2:gold:, 1-to-1.5 etc.
All input/criticism of these ideas is welcome, since this will allow me to make a better analysis of various game situations involving production :)
 
That is a very interesting question and one I have thought about for a long time. You'll appreciate that there is no simple answer to the simple question; it really does depend on the game situation and what you want to do now and in the near future. But if I had to give a single number it would be 1 :hammers: is worth 2 :gold: Sometimes it is less and only worth about 1.5 gold and sometimes more about 2.5 gold and always stays within the range 1 gold and 3 gold.

-----

Let me explain: My reasoning all revolves around the exchange rates between hammers and gold and in reverse between gold and hammers. There are 2 ways to turn gold into hammers.

a) Obviously there is US available later in the game with Democracy or most of the game with Pyramids and that has a basic exchange rate of 3 gold gives 1 hammer to complete a build that has already been started. The Kremilin reduces that to 2 gold per hammer. Rush buying something that has not had any hammers invested costs 50% more. Putting hammers towards Wonders has a base rate of 6 gold per hammer and 4 gold per hammer with The Kremlin and is horribly expensive.

b) Another way to turn gold into hammers is to upgrade units. The basic rate is again 3 gold per hammer plus an additional 20 gold per unit. That often averages out at about 4 gold per hammer for a typical upgrade and I use that as my rule of thumb upgrade cost.

There are several ways to generate gold from hammers.

c) Wealth can be built after Currency and that gives 1 gold per hammer. The hammers are the cities final output after production modifiers such as forge and factory. Hammers from chopping or whipping cannot be turned to gold.

d) Building part of a wonder that gets completed in another city gives 1 gold per hammer invested next turn. That appears to be the same rate as building Wealth. However, this can be a more efficient way to generate gold than building wealth, as Wonders often have a 100% production bonus from stone/marble effectively doubling the worth of basic hammers. The Industrious bonus has a similar effect. Another interesting feature of using wonders to generate gold is that hammers from whipping (usually overflow from a whipped unit or building) and hammers from chopping can be applied to the wonder and eventually they get turned into gold when it is built elsewhere. It is even possible to have several copies of the same wonder in different cities all partially built and each gives gold from the "lost" hammers, although this is close to an exploit in my opinion (that worked in Warlords but has not been tested by me in BtS). With Industious and the 100% production bonus it is possible to generate 2.5 times more gold from dummy building a wonder than simply using the same hammers to build Wealth. In that sense 1 hammer can be worth 2.5 gold instead of 1 hammer is worth 1 gold.

e) Overflow hammers from building units (and buildings I guess) that exceed the cost of what was being built are turned into gold. In Warlords these excess hammers could be used to generate significant amounts of gold. See vale's article Hammer Overflow for details. I don't know if it still works like that in BtS but again it seems a little borderline to some people.

------
There are ways to micromanage your cities to exchange gold and hammers

f) If you have a citizen that can be used to work a plains hill he'll give 4 basic hammers and if alternatively he could be used as a merchant he'll give a basic 3 gold plus 3 GPPs. Various civics affect the efficiency of this method of implicitly exchanging hammers and gold. Beakers from Representation, extra GPPs from Pacifism and Philosophical trait, and the modifiers from various buildings (forges etc... and markets etc...) affect the relative efficiencies. and complicate the calculations too much to make a simple conversion of hammers to gold or gold to hammers. I'll leave this part of the argument for others to think through.

------

Given those ways to generate gold from hammers and then the ways to use gold to buy hammers it is clear that the value of hammers range between a baseline 1 gold when you have more hammers than can be used effectively to a basic 3 gold when hammers are seriously needed to be bought in a city or about 4 gold when used to upgrade a cherished unit.

It is unlikely that you want to use hammers to generate gold in one city while using gold to buy hammers elsewhere, the exception might be dummy building a wonder to pay for troop upgrades. It is obviously inefficient to build Wealth in one city (1 hammer = 1 gold) and then spend gold to buy hammers in another city (3 gold = 1 hammer) but that economic inefficiency can often be justified by a military emergency or the need to expand cultural borders quickly or some other urgent reason to buy hammers. It is not something a player does often or in many places but can still be worthwhile. In that sense gold is a store of hammers that can generated at will.

----
So those are my thoughts on the worth of hammers. I did not chose any of the options in your poll as frankly I didn't understand your underlying reasoning. Perhaps you could explain how a hammer can be worth 5 gold or even 3 gold. What would be the circumstances when you would come to that opinion? This is an interesting discussion I would like to explore further.
 
I'd say that this very situation-dependent and therefore nearly impossible to answer.
Are you trying to put together an army asap, to utilize a tech lead (or while being invaded)?
Are you trying to win a rush to early religion?
Do you intend to conquer or sit back peacefully?
Whatever ratio you shall accept, it shall inevitably be wrong 3/4 of time, because just too many things factor in.

As a side-note, missionary spamming has other uses than just making cash. How much gold is worth a war initiated between hostile AI-s or the one that was never declared on you?
 
I often end up with very production-oriented empires with no where near enough gold especially in the early game, so roughly equal the whole way through IMO.
 
My experience has always been that hammers are cheaper and easier to get than gold. Look at it this way, when you *really* need hammers you can chop for them, that gets you through a few early wonders or soldiers. If you use them properly you are given a larger window of opportunity to build the next round, and you get to that window much much faster with a large amount of gold. I routinely have like 3/4 of my cities working as cottage cities, and the other two providing defense for the whole country. It works well. Imho they are equal or perhaps, the hammer is less valuable.
 
That is a very interesting question and one I have thought about for a long time. You'll appreciate that there is no simple answer to the simple question
Yes, indeed. I've never really sat down before to think about it numerically, since it is very hard to put it into such terms!

Thanks for your very thoughful and interesting reply, much good information there! :goodjob:

I did not chose any of the options in your poll as frankly I didn't understand your underlying reasoning. Perhaps you could explain how a hammer can be worth 5 gold or even 3 gold. What would be the circumstances when you would come to that opinion?
Well, the 1:hammers:=3:gold: option isn't so strange I believe. Universal Suffrage and Unit Upgrades, which you mention, both lie around that rate. I do regret not putting in a 1 hammer-to-2 gold ratio, though. It would have added much more accuracy at the cost of only 3 added poll options.

The 1 hammer-to-5 gold option is likely a bit extreme (and would perhaps have been better put to use as the 1-to-2 ratio), and personally I only think this is arguable A) In the early game, where you are building workers+settlers+monuments, and B) when you are preparing for war without universal suffrage.

Of course, as soon as maintenance becomes an issue, gold becomes more valuable so this ratio is probably too situational to be an issue.

If you think 2:gold:-to-1:hammers. or 1.5-to-1 are more reasonable then post in your reply and I'll factor it in when collating information from the thread later :)

This is an interesting discussion I would like to explore further.
As a starting point for discussion, maybe one could list the :hammers: to :gold: ratio in different situations?
E.g. (feel free to criticize the guesses. They might be consistently too high in favour of hammers)
  • Early expansion, pre-currency. 1:hammers:-to-3.5:gold: Importance of early workers+settlers. Especially true with an imperialistic or expansive Civ.
  • Classical age wars. 1-to-2.5 Build speed is paramount. You need to quickly build stacks and reinforce them. Ratio drops to 1-to-1.5 or 1-to-2 after a few conquests.
  • Post-courthouses, building of e.g. libraries and markets and National Epic. 1-to-2. Hammers are important since you generally wont have US, and hammers at this point mean increased science and gold yields faster.
  • Classical age farm heavy specialist driven empire. 1-to-1.5. In this case you generally have adequate production, but the prevalence of farms and lack of hamlets/villages lead to maintenance issues.
    etc..


I'd say that this very situation-dependent and therefore nearly impossible to answer.
Well, obviously the ratio varies, but I'm also interested in knowing what people think in different situations. The poll should only be seen as part of the question.

Then again, obviously you wouldn't pay 20:gold: for 1:hammers: or 10:hammers: for 1:gold:, so there is a region in which the exchange rate lies, and with discussion maybe it can be narrowed down ;)

Whatever ratio you shall accept, it shall inevitably be wrong 3/4 of time, because just too many things factor in.
Disagree. Sounds like just giving up.

As a side-note, missionary spamming has other uses than just making cash. How much gold is worth a war initiated between hostile AI-s or the one that was never declared on you?
Yes, this is true, but that doesn't make a calculation of a missionaries net monetary yield useless, does it? In order to calculate something, you must choose a question with a quantifiable answer.
 
2.5:commerce: = 1:hammers:

But this only works for base terrain with no modifiers. In the renaissance with banks (+100%:gold:) and no factories, rush-buying or upgrading units becomes feasible.
 
I'd just like to say that it also depends on how much food a tile has as well, and sometimes you get both hammers and gold (gold/silver/gems).

In my games I try to work tiles that "benifit" my cities the most. Sometimes I'll cottage and work plains or hill cottages at a higher priority just because it adds that extra hammer, especially if I have a food resource in the BFC.. I usually cottage over bananas and sugar.

I have to say though, I almost never put workshops or mills in my commerce cities or cottages in my production cities.. and if you look at it like that, the exchange rate has to be something like 2 gold : 1 hammer in the late game depending on how the city is specialized.
 
If I had a tile that gave me 1 food, 9 commerce as opposed to 1 food, 3 hammers, I'd take that. Or a copper on hills/plains, 6 hammers would be 18 commerce.
I find that if I get alphabet early, my production cities can make more research than my commerce cities, so earlier hammers are more plentiful. Also, consider that people build wonders for gold, so they like a 1 to 1 conversion.

The best non-resource commerce tile is 2 commerce (coast or river cottage).
 
c) Wealth can be built after Currency and that gives 1 gold per hammer. The hammers are the cities final output after production modifiers such as forge and factory. Hammers from chopping or whipping cannot be turned to gold.

<snip> (I'm a moron)

In BtS, when building :culture:/:gold:/:science:, raw production is filtered through appropriate +:hammers:% multipliers (Forge, Factory, Power, IW) before being added to the city's output [post Library/Bank/Cathedral/etc.].

This is very much like the Vanilla formula, except that production goes through +:hammers:% modifiers instead of +:culture:/:gold:/:science:% multipliers.

I'm not sure how that affects your calculations, but in the late game, this gives me the impression 1:hammers: == 2:gold: & 3:gold: == 1:hammers:.
 
As of BtS, this is no longer true.
What exactly are you saying is no longer true? His statement that hammers from chopping or whipping cannot be turned to gold?

This is very much like the Vanilla formula, except that production goes through hammer modifiers instead of science etc multipliers.
No, it always did that. The only change has been 50% to 100% from Vanilla to Warlords.
 
As of BtS, this is no longer true.
What exactly are you saying is no longer true? His statement that hammers from chopping or whipping cannot be turned to gold?

I misread his statement and actually confirmed exactly what he was saying. :blush:

This is very much like the Vanilla formula, except that production goes through hammer modifiers instead of science etc multipliers.
No, it always did that. The only change has been 50% to 100% from Vanilla to Warlords.

Well, sort of, IIRC. In Vanilla, the :hammers: were converted 2:1 then run through Libraries, Markets, etc. Warlords converted 1:1 w/ no modifiers. And now in BtS, the hammers are converted 1:1 after the +:hammers:% modifiers from Forges, Factories, etc.
 
Well, sort of, IIRC. In Vanilla, the were converted 2:1 then run through Libraries, Markets, etc. Warlords converted 1:1 w/ no modifiers. And now in BtS, the hammers are converted 1:1 after the +% modifiers from Forges, Factories, etc.

Well, I'm willing to assume that URC. :) No, no I'm not. Let me check. :)

...OK -- you're right about Vanilla, but Warlords and BTS both have the behavior you described for BTS.
 
UncleJJ has given a well thought out response, but I would like to throw in a couple more ideas.

Saying that a forge + powered factory city building wealth yields a 2 gold return per hammer ratio is not correct. If you built something else in that city, you would have received the same number of hammers as the amount of gold you produced, so you are still only getting 1:1.

Corporations (although I'm a state property man myself) allow other ways to convert gold to hammers specifically and if you restrain yourself from spamming excessively in your own cities will be at a better rate than US or upgrading troops.

Incidentally, upgrading troops I consider somewhat separately from turning gold into hammers because for the most part, you are not upgrading fresh barracks troops. At least you are looking at troops that have earned a couple of bonus promotions, so there is some added value over just disbanding and producing a new one.

Now to try to explore the original question further.

The value of gold, is empire specific and is affected by things like:

Presence of a large treasury(money is worth less if you have an excessive amount)
Ability to rush buy with gold(gold becomes more valuable as there are more uses for it)
Budget surplus/deficit at 100% and 0% research (A low deficit or a surplus at 100% depreciates the value of gold and a low surplus or a deficit at 0% greatly appreciates the value of gold)
Availability of upgrade worthy troops (appreciates the value of gold)
Availability of tech purchases/sales with the AI (available purchases appreciate the value of gold, available sales depreciate the value of gold)
Availability of good land in which to expand (by force or not is mostly irrelevant) (appreciates the value of gold by the increased costs you are planning to incur in the (near future)

The value of a hammer is city specific and is affected by things like:

Presence/absence of food/hammer sources (cities with higher production potential have less need of hammer subsidies)
Presence/absence of necessary city infrastructure (cities with complete or nearly complete necessary infrastructure are in less need of hammer subsidies and more likely to be available to build wealth)
New unit needs of empire as a whole (building wealth instead of military needs to be judged carefully)

Since we are trying to determine the relative value of hammers to gold, both aspects need to be taken into account to determine the final answer, and the answer will differ from city to city as well as vary from time to time in the game.

My thoughts are that in the very early going(0-2 cities), there would be very few gold to hammer conversions that I would not find acceptable. Here is a thought experiment:

You are building a worker in your only (starting) city
Assume you have no issues with lacking things for a worker to do.
You have popped 100 gold from a hut.
A random event pops up that offers you the ability to trade your entire treasury for X hammers in your city.

At what value of X would you reject this? Almost certainly if it didn't shave at least a turn off the worker you would reject, but is that the cutoff? Should it shave 2 turns? 3 turns? Game speed factors in here and shaving a turn at quick is significantly different than shaving a turn at marathon, but pick the speed you want and run with it.

You could repeat the above with a settler instead of a worker assuming this time that you have scoped a build site and have it fogbusted or whatever safety concerns you might have. Additionally, you could try either of them with the magic question of "how much would I be willing to pay to shave a full turn off this build?"

My thinking is that in this phase, the magical event would really have to be really hosing you on the conversion ratio for me to not want to jump on it (getting extra city turns or worker turns early can be huge) and I think the ratio that was mentioned of 3.5 gold for 1 hammer was being very generous to gold at that stage.

Similar thought experiments can be done at other points in the game, but they become more complicated in that you need to consider the state of the empire in addition to the state of the specific city. I think even late game there could exist cities where you would be "happy" to pay 5 gold for one hammer (although if you are running US, you would never have to settle for such a rate), and there could also exist cities in which you would be "happy" to give up 2 hammers to produce 1 gold (though again because of the existence of the ability to build wealth, one would never have to settle for less than 1 gold for each hammer). Furthermore, these cities could exist in the same empire at the exact same time. So the question is complex indeed in my opinion.
 
When the AI has decided to declare war, then Hammers are worth a lot more than Gold...
 
These are some good informative posts. There is one issue that has me pondering some questions however. Remember those rediculous over-powered hammer cities Obsolete used to build, with almost a thousand hammers a turn? How would such a thing adjust the gold to hammer value?

Would it really make sense to claim that one is making about 3K of gold a turn here from their capital? I believe many times when you can't afford to use all the hammers on a building/unit because you HAVE TOO MUCH, that is almost some sort of penalty.
 
... hammer cities Obsolete used to build, with almost a thousand hammers a turn?

To be fair, when talking about hammers per turn, you really need to be ignoring the hammers that are coming from overflow from a prior build. Most of the screenshots we saw were from the first turn of a build with super high production modifiers so as much as half of the overall hammers were being supplied by overflow.

How would such a thing adjust the gold to hammer value?

This ties back into the idea that a hammer's value is different from city to city. In this type of uber-production city, the value of a hammer has been diminished significantly and if this type of city were embedded in a very large empire, the value of a hammer would probably drop below the 1 gold threshold in that city, making wealth a viable build option.

In Obsolete's empires from my observation though this was always mitigated by two factors both related to empire size:

1. His empire maintenance costs remained relatively low throughout the game, diminishing the value of gold.

2. Due in part to the small size of his empire, there was necessarily a higher implied military (or spaceship) production burden on each city. This drives the value of hammers up in all his cities.

...can't afford to use all the hammers on a building/unit because you HAVE TOO MUCH, that is almost some sort of penalty.

There is a penalty there in a way. Any excess hammers that are beyond the limit allotted for hammer overflow are converted to gold at a 1:1 rate. No worse than building Wealth and in many cases where there were build specific production multipliers, somewhat better. In the most extreme degenerate cases, significantly better.
 
Well at 1 city you have a special case because gold does nothing until you have a 2nd city up and are paying maintenance for it, so any conversion rate would be acceptable.

We know the classical period exchange rate is much less than 3:1 because using pyramids-universal suffrage to rushbuy is a bad strategy.
 
Well at 1 city you have a special case because gold does nothing until you have a 2nd city up and are paying maintenance for it, so any conversion rate would be acceptable.

Not quite true since the 1 city state is not going to be a permanent empire state unless for some reason you are torturing yourself with OCC. So gold may not have immediate value but does have potential value for your future expansion and so we can't accept any conversion rate although I agree that any reasonable conversion rate would be acceptable.

Also, with the addition of random events in BTS, gold has some added value at any point after I believe turn 20.

We know the classical period exchange rate is much less than 3:1 because using pyramids-universal suffrage to rushbuy is a bad strategy.

I think this is a very biased approach to trying to answer the question. There are other factors as to why this may be a bad approach.

1. There is the issue of anarchy going into and out of US if not Spiritual.
2. Regardless, there is a minimum of 5 turns not enjoying representations huge (during the early game) happy bonus.
3. In addition, there is a minimum of 5 turns not enjoying representations huge (during the early game) specialist bonus.
4. Most tiles being worked are high food/high hammer tiles/low commerce tiles (reflecting the relative value of production/hammers vs. commerce/gold during the time period) which do not allow the rapid stockpiling of gold for mass purchases during a US binge. (So one either has to remain in a mostly useless civic (nobody has towns at this point) for long periods of time, or swap back and forth repeatedly still encountering the above with multiple 5 turn waiting periods to get out)

So the cost of rush buying with US is not just restricted to the actual gold cost and I strongly believe it is better to think of it in terms of some mythical conversion "event" that occurs at a point when, for whatever reason (captured enemy city, goody hut, sold tech, extortion, failed wonder, gold overflow), you have a gold stockpile available to spend on things.
 
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